


A Lifetime in a Moment

by ghostbustier



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Sadstuck, implied off-screen death, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-11 00:49:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostbustier/pseuds/ghostbustier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a thousand years since the Condesce took him as her prize and favoured slave to power and navigate her flagship. He stopped counting, he stopped caring. He stopped trying to wiggle his fingers to see if they still moved, stopped trying to move his legs to keep them from atrophying under the weight and lack of activity. He remembered what it was like to have been driven insane under the monotony and repetition of the dual responsibilities of interstellar navigator and psychic propellant. He remembered and then forgot.</p><p>Without active nights, without resting days, there was no way to mark the time. It just marched on, passing him by.</p><p>And then a second held its breath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lifetime in a Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on The Homestuck Armada - http://homestuckarmada.tumblr.com for a prompt for Handmaiden/Psiionic red romance

It had been a thousand years since the Condesce took him as her prize and favoured slave to power and navigate her flagship. He stopped counting, he stopped caring. He stopped trying to wiggle his fingers to see if they still moved, stopped trying to move his legs to keep them from atrophying under the weight and lack of activity. He remembered what it was like to have been driven insane under the monotony and repetition of the dual responsibilities of interstellar navigator and psychic propellant. He remembered and then forgot.

Without active nights, without resting days, there was no way to mark the time. It just marched on, passing him by.

And then a second held its breath.

Then another, and another, until the mustard-blooded Psiionic felt time come to a halt. Shortly after, the subtle and constant hum of psychic energy warbled. It was quiet and almost undetectable, and then she was there like a ghost slipping out from behind a silk curtain.

A familiar sensation itched in the back of his mind and he hesitated before he could remember that there was a word for it: curiosity. Before his head could turn to follow the shimmer in the fabric of the universe, she was in front of him. Slender and immense at the same time, her eyes were filled with millenia of violence and apathy and obedience and rebellion.

He expected her to kill him, to free him from an eternity of servitude. He wished for it, he begged for it, he demanded it. But now, she couldn’t do that. She wasn’t permitted. He still had a long duty to serve to his Empress. But what she could do was give him a reprieve.

In the space of a second and for a single yellow lifetime, she took him away. Off the ship, away from the other trolls, away from her own Master, they lived and they loved. They philosophized and fought and made up and everything in between.

But one day, she woke him from inside their shared recupracoon. Her voice faltered for the first time he ever remembered hearing. She told him that time was up. He had to go back.

One of the most powerful and terrifying beings in existence wept as she brought her love back to his prison and formed his shackles once more around healed scars. He didn’t resist, nor did he assist. He was too busy listening to the fabric of the universe and the souls of the doomed. His own voice was among them.

When the seconds breathed again, the Alternian flagship faltered only for a moment as he reasserted his control over it. It was only a few more breaths later when the Condesce screamed into his room, panicking and raging over a crisis he couldn’t comprehend and demanding he turn the ship around and take them home - now.


End file.
